After week of political posturing, the New York Times says that Myspace will hand over to state attorneys general the names, addresses and online profiles of thousands of known convicted sex offenders who have opened up accounts on the service. More than 7,000 profiles of convicted sexual predators have been removed as well. States must subpoena Myspace for specific information on suspects. A dozen states have done so already.
Seven thousand profiles is a drop in the bucket in relation to the 180 million profiles currently on Myspace. Profile removal is straightforward. These people should not have been able to get on the service to begin with, but Myspace would never have flourished with tighter security controls in place from day one.
The problem now becomes how to implement safety measure during the signup process, which will certainly curtail the number of new members as they move on to new sites.
Me? I’m over on Facebook now. I’ll keep my Myspace account but I almost never log in anymore. Speaking of Facebook, expect big news on Thursday about the evolution of the Facebook platform.
